For the 24-year-old German Felix Georgii and the 19-year-old American Guenther Oka it was a good day on the Olympic Lake. Newcomer Oka, taking part in the Big Air for the first time, showed no signs of nerves and won over the judges by not only pulling the best tricks on the funbox but also performing one of the sickest moves over the towering Big Air kicker. In the second qualifying heat, Felix Georgii landed the first one-footer trick on the Big Air to claim top spot.

Among the other six riders who managed to qualify for Sunday’s knockout were the 18-year- old Liam Rundholz from the German town of Wachtendonk and Nico von Lerchenfeld from Cologne, who finished third at last year’s event. Indeed, it was von Lerchenfeld who showed the biggest variety of tricks over the challenging rails floating on the Olympic Lake and pulled out a strong Switch Backside 540 over the main kicker. Also through to the Knockout Round is Austria’s Dominik Hernler, the winner of the event in 2016. Joining him there will be Aaron Gunn (AUS), John Dreilling (USA) and Black Bishop (USA).
Unfortunately the German trio of Alex Aulbach, Benedikt Tremmel and Dominik Gührs will all not feature in the Knockout Round after being eliminated in qualifying.

The Knockout Round will take place on Sunday 25 June from 14:00. It sees the top eight riders from qualifying go head-to-head in four heats, with the best rider in each heat progressing to the Super-Final.